Be careful when you get what you ask for… Especially when others believe they deserve the prize more than you. And some will do everything necessary to get what they want, even murder. Duncan’s confidence has failed to account for a paranoid High Priest, a jealous King unhappy with the way the people have taken to this stranger, and a certain ambitious Priest who wants nothing better than to get rid of the High Priest and Duncan at the same time. Unfortunately, Vix, Gambria’s High Priest, has a more immediate problem. He must eliminate Duncan before the contest reveals Vix is a fraud. It’s time to call in assassins and eliminate this obnoxious threat. And where is Alexis when you need her? Unhappy with a woman as Berserker, especially one who is untested in battle and still learning the language, King Diad tells his Battle Commander to place her on a weak flank against the Rugian army. Hopefully, they can take care of the problem and Gambria can find a new Berserker. Then there’s Bradwr, King Diad’s brother, who believes Diad is no longer worthy of being king and has determined that the title is now within his reach. This is a revamping of a former series titled Wolf 359. The Misfit series is geared to a wider audience and age groups.
A science-fantasy adventure series! With their spaceship destroyed, the remaining two survivors of a failed colonization mission jettison down to a planet with the hope they can survive. Duncan, a bookish linguist, and Alexis, a beautiful gladiator in the prime of her career, suddenly find themselves drawn into the struggles between two warring kingdoms. Their fortunes improve when Alexis’ combat skills are discovered, and she is challenged by the nation’s berserker who underestimates his opponent and pays dearly for it. Yet no sooner is she awarded his position, title, and wealth when she is called upon to lead the nation’s warriors in the first full scale battle she has ever experienced, against an enemy who take no prisoners. With the very real possibility that Alexis might not survive the battle, Duncan is left alone to fend for himself. Calling himself a Wizard of the Universe, he is brought before the Council of Prelates to explain his obvious heresy. Deftly answering their questions, he throws caution to the wind and challenges the nation’s High Priest to a contest of divine favor. The one who calls down thunder and lightning from the sky is the chosen one of God and becomes the nation’s High Priest. The loser dies. This is a revamping of a former series titled Wolf 359. The Misfit series is geared to a wider audience and age groups.
Frustrated with their efforts to retrieve the wayward time travelers, Time Travel Incorporated (TTI) decides to solve the problem with a more permanent solution. If you can’t bring them back, eliminate them where they are. An assassination team is sent to the past with the mission of tying up loose ends. Meanwhile, hoping TTI will finally accept that they will never come back and leave them alone, Erik and Tone settle down on the farm that Jarl Halfdan has given him. Unfortunately, Jarl Thorsten believes he has a claim to the farm and decides to exercise that claim by sending battle-hardened men to challenge Erik to individual combat. Much to Thorsten’s dismay, Erik not only defeats all challengers, he manages to gain another farm deep in Thorsten’s jarldom. Thorsten’s solution? Kidnap Tone. Just as Tone risked her life to find him, Erik must now risk his life to rescue the only woman he has ever truly loved.
This second edition of the Rough Guide Book of Playlistscontains more than 500 lists of which 50 are new to this edition. The lists are recommendations of ten songs (sometimes a couple more, sometimes a couple less), covering artists (Rufus Wainwright to Thelonius Monk, Al Green to Manu Chao, Glenn Gould to Julie Andrews), genres (Bebop Classics to Reggae Toasters to Punk Originals to Hot Club jazz), songs (10 best Dylan covers; 8 classic versions of Summertime; 10 love songs that don't cloy), quirks and silliness (Songs about Chickens and Insects; Who let the frogs out?; Big Pizza Pie crooners; Take this Job and Shove it!). There's even a literary edge with playlists like '10 songs raved about in Murakami novels'. Each of the Playlists has a nugget about the song (why you want it on your iPod), and a listings of where it's from (remember CDs?).
FIRST NEW HONOR HARRINGTON NOVEL IN FIVE YEARS! New York Times, USA Today, Wall Street Journal and international best-selling phenomenon David Weber delivers book #19 in the multiple New York Times best-selling Honor Harrington series, the first new Honor Harrington novel since 2013's Shadow of Freedom. HONOR'S FINISHING WHAT SHE STARTED The Solarian League's navy counts its superdreadnoughts by the thousands. Not even its own government knows how enormous its economy truly is. And for hundreds of years, the League has borne the banner of human civilization, been the ideal to which humanity aspires in its diaspora across the galaxy. But the bureaucrats known as the "Mandarins," who rule today's League, are not the men and women who founded it so long ago. They are corrupt, venal, accountable to no one . . . and they've decided the upstart Star Kingdom of Manticore must be destroyed. Honor Harrington has worn the Star Kingdom's uniform for half a century and served her monarch and her people well. In the course of those years, the woman the newsies call the Salamander has grown from a tactically brilliant but politically naïve junior officer to supreme fleet command and a seat on the highest military and political councils of the Grand Alliance. Very few people know war the way Honor Harrington does. Very few have lost as many men and women, as many friends, as much family, as she has. Yet despite that, hers has been a voice of caution. She knows the Mandarins and the Solarian League Navy are growing increasingly desperate as the truth of their technological inferiority sinks home, but she also knows the sheer size of the League. And she knows how its citizens will react if the Grand Alliance takes the war to the League, attacks its star systems, destroys its infrastructure . . . kills its civilians. Today's victory, bought on those terms, can only guarantee a future war of revenge against a resurgent Solarian League and its navy. Honor knows the Grand Alliance must find a victory that doesn't require incursions deep into Solarian space, doesn't leave a legacy of bottomless hatred, and the strategy she supports has been working. The League is sliding towards inglorious defeat as it steadily loses ground in the Protectorates and the Verge. As its central government teeters towards bankruptcy and even some of its core systems opt to secede in the face of the Mandarins' corruption. As the Solarian Navy finally realizes it cannot face an Alliance battle fleet and win. But the Mandarins have embraced a desperate new strategy, and in pursuit of that strategy, the SLN has committed atrocities such as the galaxy has not known in a thousand years. The League have violated its own Eridani Edict against mass civilian casualties, violated the Deneb Accords prohibition on war crimes. And they have finally killed too many of the people Honor Harrington loves. Hers is the voice of caution and compromise no longer, and the galaxy is about to see something it has never imagined. The Salamander is coming for the Solarian League, and Hell is coming in her wake. At the publisher's request, this title is sold without DRM (Digital Rights Management). About Uncompromising Honor: “…a balanced mix of interstellar intrigue, counterespionage, and epic fleet action…with all the hard- and software details and tactical proficiency that Weber delivers like no one else; along with a large cast of well-developed, believable characters, giving each clash of fleets emotional weight.”—Booklist “. . . moves. . . as inexorably as the Star Kingdom’s Grand Fleet, commanded by series protagonist Honor Harrington. . . . Weber is the Tom Clancy of science fiction. . . . His fans will relish this latest installment. . . .”—Publishers Weekly About Shadow of Freedom, #18 in the Honor Harrington series: “This entry is just as exciting as Weber’s initial offering. . . .The result is a fast-paced and action-packed story that follows [our characters] as they move from reaction to command of the situation. Weber builds Shadow of Freedom to an exciting and unexpected climax.”—Daily News of Galveston About Mission of Honor, #13 in the Honor Harrington series: “Weber combines realistic, engaging characters with intelligent technological projection and a deep understanding of military bureaucracy in this long-awaited Honor Harrington novel…Fans of this venerable space opera will rejoice to see Honor back in action.”–Publishers Weekly “This latest Honor Harrington novel brings the saga to another crucial turning point…Readers may feel confident that they will be Honored many more times and enjoy it every time.”–Booklist About David Weber and the Honor Harrington series: “. . .everything you could want in a heroine …. Excellent … plenty of action.”–Science Fiction Age “Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant!”–Anne McCaffrey “Compelling combat combined with engaging characters for a great space opera adventure.”–Locus “Weber combines realistic, engaging characters with intelligent technological projection . . . Fans of this venerable space opera will rejoice . . .”–Publishers Weekly Honor Harrington Main Series: On Basilisk Station The Honor of the Queen The Short Victorious War Field of Dishonor Flag in Exile Honor Among Enemies In Enemy Hands Echoes of Honor Ashes of Victory War of Honor The Shadow of Saganami At All Costs Storm from the Shadows Mission of Honor A Rising Thunder Shadow of Freedom Uncompromising Honor
"[An] extraordinary book. . . . Mr. Gould is an exceptional combination of scientist and science writer. . . . He is thus exceptionally well placed to tell these stories, and he tells them with fervor and intelligence."—James Gleick, New York Times Book Review High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It hold the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail. In this book Stephen Jay Gould explores what the Burgess Shale tells us about evolution and the nature of history.
Who is Mariam? Her family in Roman Gaul know her only as a refugee from far-off Judah, without other relatives or friends. For more than thirty years Mariam has herself turned her back on the past, but now a series of events forces her to confront it. In her final illness, that past begins to haunt her, as she looks back on a youth and early adulthood during the turbulent events of the first century ad under Roman occupation, and amongst a people who refused to accept the yoke of the Empire. Born in the north of Judah, in the rebellious territory known as the Galilee, Mariam grows up in a hard-working peasant community, mutinous, impatient, unwilling to accept the traditional role of women in her society. Running away from home - against all conventions and propriety - to follow her charismatic brother Yeshua and his best friend Yehuda, Mariam shares in the excitement, the fear and the mystery, but at the last witnesses the apparent betrayal of the one and the tragic and brutal death of the other.
Traces the origins of the black rage defense in criminal court history In 1971, Paul Harris pioneered the modern version of the black rage defense when he successfully defended a young black man charged with armed bank robbery. Dubbed one of the most novel criminal defenses in American history by Vanity Fair, the black rage defense is enormously controversial, frequently dismissed as irresponsible, nothing less than a harbinger of anarchy. Consider the firestorm of protest that resulted when the defense for Colin Ferguson, the gunman who murdered numerous passengers on a New York commuter train, claimed it was considering a black rage defense. In this thought-provoking book, Harris traces the origins of the black rage defense back through American history, recreating numerous dramatic trials along the way. For example, he recounts in vivid detail how Clarence Darrow, defense attorney in the famous Scopes Monkey trial, first introduced the notion of an environmental hardship defense in 1925 while defending a black family who shot into a drunken white mob that had encircled their home. Emphasizing that the black rage defense must be enlisted responsibly and selectively, Harris skillfully distinguishes between applying an environmental defense and simply blaming society, in the abstract, for individual crimes. If Ferguson had invoked such a defense, in Harris's words, it would have sent a superficial, wrong-headed, blame-everything-on-racism message. Careful not to succumb to easy generalizations, Harris also addresses the possibilities of a white rage defense and the more recent phenomenon of cultural defenses. He illustrates how a person's environment can, and does, affect his or her life and actions, how even the most rational person can become criminally deranged, when bludgeoned into hopelessness by exploitation, racism, and relentless poverty.
